Wednesday, April 23, 2014

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the DFW Fiber Fest at the Irving Convention Center. It was truly a wonderful show with amazing hospitality and a great variety of fiber arts. Going to another part of the country with a different climate provided great inspiration for my knitting. Fortunately I had brought 2 skeins of Tangier with me.

The shawl worked up fairly quickly over the weekend. Tangier is a silk blend with 8 colors per colorway. It plays well on the needles and blocks out beautifully. A slightly modified Roman Stripe created a lovely, open pattern.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Before
I introduce you to my new Craftsy class, I’d like to thank Cascade Yarns for
not only allowing me to share with you my class, but for also supporting it by
providing me with their wonderful yarns to create two of the 3 projects in this
class! I love Cascade Yarns not only
because they are local to me, but also because they are fantastic yarns to
design with, and I know that you will love the projects I have for you in this
class using Cascade 220® and 220 Superwash® Sport!

In
my new Craftsy class,Fair Isle Crochet:Demystifying Colorwork, you will expertly navigate beautiful colorwork as
you crochet classic Fair Isle patterns throughout three captivating projects.
Join me, published author and professional designer, Karen Whooley, for my
online Craftsy class and discover fun new techniques to crochet complex
stranded projects with confidence.

In
this class you will learn to translate traditional knitted Fair Isle Techniques
to crochet in a way that allows the motifs to pop! I will help you learn to read charts, change
colors cleanly and how to handle all the ends that undoubtedly are created in
any sort of colorwork. You’ll also learn to work colorwork in the round and
I’ll highlight common mistakes and how to fix them! And as a bonus section, you
will learn how to create your own charts and modify them for your own projects!

While you are learning all this, you will be
working on 3 projects The Poet Shawl, a Fair Isle Trivet, and a Fair Isle hat,
complete with pom-pom.

The Poet Shawl is made with Cascade 220®. I discovered 220 many years ago when learning
to felt. It is my go to yarn whenever I
need to felt a crochet project! But in
this project I wanted a warm and cozy yarn that had great stability, lots of
colors to choose from and I knew would drape well. I wanted the very first project in the class
to be out of worsted weight yarn so that the new-to-fair-isle crocheter could
easily see what (s)he needed to do and where to place the stitches. I chose some traditional Fair Isle colors in
the pinks and greys that I used for this shawl, but you can decide for yourself
if those are the colors you want to use! And to make things convenient, Craftsy
is offering kits with just the right amounts of yarn for your shawl.

The Fair Isle Hat is worked with 220
Superwash® Sport yarn.Again I chose some
more traditional Fair Isle colors, but there are so many colors in this line to
choose from!I love this sport yarn
because it is so soft, and that is what I want on my head.But beyond that, choosing a sport weight yarn
that is durable and tried and true was important to me.This project is worked in a thinner yarn
purposely so that my students will see the effect of using different weights as
well. 220 Superwash Sport® is perfect for a hat because it also will not shrink,
and that is important with a hat!Think
about those college students you might make this hat for that just toss
everything in the dryer - It won’t shrink! And again, you can get the kit for
this project on Craftsy as well.